Nov. 17, 2023

299: Championship Club Conf Recap November 2023

Ever wondered how to pull off a spectacular club event, big or small? Let us guide you through the labyrinth of organization, planning, and execution. Our recent episode of Pirate Club Radio lifts the curtain on the Club Championship Conference, revealing all the undercurrents that make such events a success. We had the pleasure of having Colin Burns, the former GM of Winged Foot Golf Club, share his experiences on the hurdles and triumphs of planning a tournament amidst a pandemic. You'll hear about the importance of transparency, consistent communication, and making every stakeholder feel like they're part of the journey.

Additionally, Kevin Bazzata of Augusta National unspools the secret to maintaining unparalleled service and crafting a memorable patron experience. He emphasizes the significance of creating robust systems, processes, and infrastructure that support consistency in service delivery. Whether you're interested in understanding the nitty-gritties of player experience, or the art of community engagement for your events, this episode has got you covered. Get ready to glean some incredible lessons on managing club events, engage in enlightening discussions with industry professionals, and perhaps, just maybe, ignite the spark for your next big tournament. So sit back, hit play, and let us take you behind the scenes of club championship events!

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Hey everyone, welcome back to Pirate Club Radio.

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I'm your host, denny Corby, and in this episode I wanna recap, talk about the Club Championship Conference that the NCAA put on.

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It was the first time that they've done this and it was a really good time.

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I'll be honest, I do not plan on hosting or putting on my own championship events at a club, but I think it's fun to learn.

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I think it's fun to engage and learn about what other people are doing, because, even though it's learning at such a large scale and something that you might not wanna do, it's taking that information, using it at a smaller scale, cause, obviously, if it works at a big scale, you can use it as a on a smaller scale, and we all have maybe different tournaments and different things that we do.

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So, even though it might not be applicable you might not want a giant championship style event you can still utilize the concepts and ideas for smaller ones.

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So what was cool is there was people of all different clubs and people who were there for different reasons.

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There was people to give value, people who have experience, there's people who wanted to experience and learn from the people being there, and there were also people who put on their own conferences or their own championship events.

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So they were there looking to learn a little bit as well and constantly pick up some of their clubs.

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So it was a win-win for all.

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It was just a one day, which was really nice.

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So it started off at 10 o'clock, went till about 5.36 with some cocktails at the end, but it started off with a nice welcome from Mr Joe Trauger, the president, ceo of the NCA, and Tom Wallace, ccm, ccc, e-m, e-c-m I always bust them so many letters from Copeland, kebler and Wallace and they just talked about kind of the goals for the day, the vision of what was going on.

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One of the best quotes I heard and I believe it was someone who said they didn't expect someone else to be there, and I forget the gentleman's name, I apologize, but he says he said you know what you know and you don't know what you don't know, and I just thought that was something pretty much what I was trying to say in what I was thinking, just summed up into two lines.

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So to start it off, we had Colin Burns, the former GM of Winged Foot Golf Club, and it was all about highlighting the preparedness clubs have to take prior to securing or hosting a tournament, and that's everything from the initial discussions with the league, modifications to the course involving the membership, the board, the staff and his was interesting because all of a sudden everything changed, because it was the pandemic.

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So he talked about dealing and innovating and how to maneuver.

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I enjoyed it and some of the takeaways that I got from it was him talking about the pillars of success when it comes to the experience and the experience of the players, the members and the guests, and that is a common theme throughout the entire program that we were having as well.

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One of the major takeaways Colin wanted to bring to light is really transparency and consistent communication across all platforms with all people, from the highest level to the lowest level.

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Then during lunch we heard from one of Joe's friends, dan Meyer, who was the chief of staff speaker for Kevin McCarthy, speaker for Newt Gingrich and the assistant to the president for congressional affairs for president George W Bush.

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He talked during lunch.

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Then we had a session about player experience with Robbie Zalsnik, who's the former USGA senior director of player services, and his was about how each venue has its unique opportunities to heighten the experience that competitors have during the tournament week.

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Then we had a patron experience and service excellence with Kevin Bazzata, who works over at Augusta National, and in my main takeaway and his talking points was really about driving excellence and having systems and processes in place to ensure a consistent level of excellence.

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One of the key words was infrastructure.

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So system processes, infrastructure and simplifying as much as possible.

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Make it as simple as possible, less as more.

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If something takes 25 steps, figure out how we can make it 24, even better, 22, under 20.

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How do we make things as simple as possible and consistent as possible?

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Because that's how you train so many people, especially at Augusta.

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When I didn't write down the numbers, so I apologize, but he was saying how they, for the event, they get thousands of people in a short amount of time, so they have to, and had to still have to, figure out how to make things as easy and seamless as possible to work through so many people, to get so many people to come through and keep that level of service that's expected and needed, required at Augusta.

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They give everyone all the tools and resources that they need to succeed.

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So when they bring in the chefs, they give the chefs all the tools, literally and figuratively, everything they need to make the best meals so the guests can have the best experience possible, and it goes for every single position.

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Everybody has all the tools and all the resources that they need to succeed.

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And then, to wrap it all up, we had Jeffrey Creeful I apologize if I mispronounce your name from Congressional and he was all about the community engagement in support of your events and how important it is to engage the community early and often and selling through the community.

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Get the community involvement, get people behind it as early as possible and don't have any surprises.

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Get in talks with the police for security, fire zoning you as the club, ensuring that the community feels a part of this event, that you're having this championship style event, because it is something really special, it is something really unique.

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And why not have the community be involved as much as possible, cause it also allows them to feel like they're part of the tournament and they'll also benefit from it.

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So everybody, from local vendors, charitable organizations, business engagements, different groups, nonprofits there's so many ways to get the community and get more people involved.

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And really, to sum it all up, it was just amazing to see that we had about 40, 50 people and just having so many people who were that engaged and wanting to learn about this particular subject and be able to have such an intimate space in this forum to not just learn but ask questions, and there was some like fireside chats and there was just really good engagement in conversation.

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That was almost invaluable, I would say, because the connections that were made, the questions that were answered and the topics that were discussed were extremely invaluable.

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I'm super excited that I went and learned.

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You know, as you heard, I had a bunch of takeaways and I encourage you, if you haven't already, make sure you check out the NCA National Club Association.

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So I was very happy to go and learn and be a part and even more thrilled to be able to share with you all a little bit about it and some of the takeaways that I had.

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So, as always, appreciate your support any way possible.

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Sorry, car, pran, pran, pran, pran.

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A like, share, subscribe.

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Anything that you can do to help move our industry forward means the world.

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Until next time, catch on the flippity flu.